A. The White Mountain Guide (the book) gives
estimated times required to complete each trail, and often similar
times for the segments of the trail. These times are the result of
an arithmetical computation based on the distance and elevation
gain. Each mile, or 1,000 feet of elevation gain, is estimated to
take 30 minutes. Downhill stretches are treated as if they were
flat, i. e. they are estimated to take 30 minutes per mile.

The most obvious problem with this is that it says nothing about
how long it will take you to complete that segment. Two
other, less obvious, problems exist: it does not take the
difficulty (steepness, roughness) of the trail into account, nor
does it account for the fact that most hikers are slower at the end
of a long trip than at its start.

You may use my book time
calculator, written in JavaScript, to calculate the book time
given the distance and elevation gain.

Q. What can book
time tell me? Or, to be blunter, is it of any use?

A. In spite of its imprecision book time, used with some
though, is extremely useful.

As a minimum it is a single number that can roughly classify
trips into short, medium and long. This is very useful for the
beginner who is unfamiliar with the region.

With experience hikers learn what their speed on most trips is
relative to book time. Once you know that you usually take
10% less than book time to do a trip it becomes a much more useful
planning tool. With more experience you will learn roughly at what
stage a long trip starts to slow you down, and with that knowledge
the tool becomes even more powerful.

Once you have learned what your speed is relative to book time
it even becomes a navigational tool. The Crawford Path reaches the
Mizpah Cutoff at 1:40 of book time. If you have observed that you
usually take about 10% less than book time, that means that
you should reach it in about 1:30, so you should be on the
lookout for it after about 1:20 on the trail.

Q. How
difficult is this trip?

A. There are many factors to be considered in estimating
the difficulty of a trip.

Distance. This is the most obvious factor, but not
always the most important! See the comparison between the Mt.
Garfield and Falling Waters trails under Steepness below.

Elevation gain. For many hikers elevation gains greater
than 2,500 to 3,000 feet become very tiring. Going from 2,500 to
4,000 feet adds less than an hour to book time, but for many will
change an easy hike into a very difficult one.

Steepness. This adds very much to the difficulty of a
hike. Many people will find the Mt. Garfield trail, with 3,000 feet
of elevation gain over five miles, substantially easier than the
Falling Waters trail, with the same 3,000 feet of elevation gain
compressed into three, much steeper, miles. Note that, because of
its greater length, the easier Garfield trail has a greater book
time than the Falling Waters trail!

Roughness. A rough footway is more tiring than a smooth
one.

There is no way to integrate all these into a single number that
will reflect on the difficulty of the trip. Nonetheless, questions
such as "What are the easiest Fours?" or "How do these two trips
compare?" are valid questions. I believe that book time, with all
its imperfections, is as good a proxy as any for the difficulty of
a hike. I therefore give a table
showing most of the hikes described on this site, sorted by book
time. Use it with some common sense, and with the information
available elsewhere on this site and in the White Mountain
Guide.

Q. What are some easy
trails to 4000 footers?

A. The following have fairly short distances, minimal (by
White Mountain Fours standards!) elevation gains and reasonable
footing (this last factor excludes Cannon and the East Peak of
Osceola from the list):

A. There are two groups of peaks that may be difficult to
do. The first consists of the peaks with more than 4,000 feet of
elevation gain, fortunately they can all be reached more easily by
using the AMC huts. The second consists of the peaks that are far
from any road, these can prove more challenging.

Mounts Washington,
Adams and
Madison all require more than 4,000 feet
of steep climbing, and many hikers find them extremely challenging.
Fortunately trips up these peaks can be done over two easier days
using the hut system, spending a night at
Lakes of the Clouds Hut
for Mount Washington (and getting Mt. Monroe in the process) or at
Madison Spring Hut for Mounts
Madison and Adams. In good weather a three day two night
traverse based on the huts is a
spectacular trip.

At least two, and some would say three, peaks involve
substantial distances. Owl's Head
is a long hike, but with moderate elevation gain, many peakbaggers
decide that it is easier to do it in a day than to do it as an
overnight. Mount Isolation is
shorter than Owl's head, but has more elevation gain, it is again a
candidate for an overnight. Many peakbaggers find the
Bonds too long to do in a day and
decide to do them as an overnight (or even over three days and two
nights).

Q. What are some
moderate Fours with great views?

A. I wrote an article on Great
Rewards for Moderate Effort (published in the July 2001 issue
of the AMC Boston Chapter's newsletter "The Charles River Mud")
that may be of interest to some visitors to this site.